Remains of ’37 Flight May Have Been Found

An American expedition headed by an Orange County aviation buff has found evidence of wreckage of a Soviet plane that disappeared 50 years ago during a pioneering flight across the North Pole, the group’s members say.

Walter Kurilchyk of Capistrano Beach, who heads the search effort for the plane piloted by Sigismund Levanevsky, is preparing a report of findings off Alaska’s North Slope in the hopes of involving the Soviet government in recovery efforts.

“I think we’ve found it,” said Kurilchyk, a retired federal appraiser and college instructor who discussed last month’s expedition with an official from the U.S. State Department’s Soviet affairs office.

The finding of the remains of the four-engine plane piloted by Levanevsky, known as the “Lindbergh of Russia,” would be comparable to the United States locating the plane of famed aviator Amelia Earhart, Kurilchyk said.

“I’m going to invite the Russians to participate (in the search),” he added.

Levanevsky and his five crew members disappeared in August, 1937, while attempting a daring flight across the North Pole designed to prove the feasibility of a commercial airline route from Moscow to the United States.

Last month, a group of 12 volunteers found 30 metal objects while scouring a one-square-mile area off Oliktok, about 175 miles east of Barrow, Alaska, with a magnetometer, which detects ferrous material.

Divers were unable to recover any of the objects, some quite heavy, because they were buried under more than five feet of sand and no dredging equipment was available, Kurilchyk said.

Bad weather forced the expedition to suspend the search after about 10 days, he said.

“We’re not certain what is there,” said another expedition member, Ron Mickle, a former aircraft accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. “But looking at the plotted location of those objects under the surface . . .it’s indicative of a ditched landing of an aircraft.”